I Write To Keep My Sanity

The Journey To Samana

The long awaited blog post is here. Well, I feel it’s long awaited. I’ve been promising to fill you in on what happened in the Dominican Republic but I’ve found myself recently inundated with tasks that need to be completed by an upcoming deadline (more on that in a new post).

But now, I’m ready. I have a moment to catch my breath and spill it back out again just so you all can know about my DR experience. So read on.

At around 11PM on a Friday night, I arrive at JFK to meet my boyfriend coming from London. We thought it’d be cute / more fun to fly together since he was coming into my city for a layover. I decided to greet him at JFK despite the fact that our DR flight wasn’t scheduled to leave until 9AM the next day. After about an hour and a half awaiting (border patrol was no joke for him), I finally saw him.

Knowing it was late and that we’d only get four or five hours sleep at a hotel in the city before having to go back to the airport, we decided to wait it out at JFK. Sleeping near check in, we tried to get very uncomfortable rest in some Delta chairs. At around 4 or 5AM (can’t honestly remember), we check in for our flight and make our way through security.

We’re sitting at the gate for a few hours when a trip debbie downer happens. My phone is no where in sight. I had in my hand and then stuck it in my pocket, never getting up once from seat at the gate but somehow it went poof. My boyfriend and I began picking through our belongings and searching next to us. Ultimately I report it to the gate and they offer no real help. My boyfriend then tries to get security involved and they direct him to find the police station in the terminal (talk about drama). I keep searching and re-opening the same bags when after an hour or more of this a woman behind me asks “Are you looking for something?” Cue the eye roll.

I say yes and she asks what for and then I say my phone (I mean she literally sat right behind me and heard me talking about this and looking for the past hour). She then tells me she found it in a place that there was no way in hell it was (I never left my seat). She then asks me to tell her the color of my phone to confirm it’s correct and then signals her man friend to give me my phone. She says god is good while he digs to the literal depths of his bag to give it back. After a few minutes of fumbling, he pulls it out and gives it to me. It is at this point I realize my phone was turned off. Thieves! No one who finds a phone turns it off. If you lose your phone, you will call it so it was obvious they didn’t want whoever who lost it (me) to find it.

At that point, I take the phone and accept her lies. My boyfriend and I move seats and learn an early lesson. Be extra attentive to your things. Putting it in your coat pocket is risky when your coat is not on your body.

After that we board are plain, phone in hand, and get ready to jet off. Or so we think. We sit out on the strip for like an hour and a half before having to get off the plane due to some sort of broken or incorrectly functioning thing on it. HUH?

We wait an hour or so more and then board. Flying for about four hours, we finally hit Santo Domingo.

I don’t have any pictures from this day I realize but I was too exhausted to do any photos.

The next morning, we went to the bus station to head off to Samana.

We took a gua-gua (a rickety bus) in the rain from Samana to our place in Las Galeras. It was amazing but a rough journey getting there. Stay tuned for what’s next!